At the sitting held on 15 March, the Foreign Affairs Committee considered the Draft Roadmap on the fulfillment of the remaining obligations of the Republic of Serbia to the Council of Europe, part of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly monitoring process.

At the beginning of the sitting, Committee Chairman Prof. Dr Dragoljub Micunovic reminded the deputies that the monitoring of the fulfillment of the obligations and recommendations that Serbia was supposed to meet after its joining the Council of Europe, in April 2003, had been implemented by both the CE Parliamentary Assembly and CE Ministers Committee. The monitoring procedure on the level of the Ministers Committee ended in March 2009 and is currently on the level of post-monitoring dialogue, while on the PACE level Serbia is still supervised by the Monitoring Committee.

In the PACE resolution and recommendations adopted in April 2009, Serbia was called to draft a roadmap which would set out the obligations remaining to be fulfilled and create appropriate conditions to complete the process, said the Committee Chairman.

At the sitting, it was said that Serbia had ratified 75 Council of Europe conventions some of which were legally binding considering that they contribute to the harmonisation of domestic and European Union legislation. It was also stressed that almost all of the commitments in the field of improving democracy and human rights have been honoured through legislative reform and improved work of the institutions.

The Committee members accepted the Draft Roadmap and proposed that it be amended since some of the commitments have already been fulfilled. They anticipate the PACE Monitoring Committee’s report expected in June, to be positive and allow Serbia exit the eight-year-long monitoring process.

The Draft Roadmap containing a summary of Serbia’s obligations to the Council of Europe fulfilled so far was prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with other ministries and coordination with the members of the National Assembly’s Standing Delegation to PACE. The report also contains information on Serbia’s upcoming steps in fulfilling all the obligations it accepted as part of its Council of Europe membership.